ALEX BAG + DAVID RIMANELLI
Conversation + Screening


EAI presents an evening of conversation and screening with artist Alex Bag and art critic David Rimanelli.


Wednesday, March 11, 2009
6:30 pm


Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)
535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10011

www.eai.org

Admission free



Alex Bag joins EAI for an evening devoted to her singular body of work in video. Over the last fifteen years, the video camera has been Bag's art-making tool and weapon of choice. Focusing her lens on high and low culture, the mainstream and the underground, Bag creates her own unique simulations of TV. In her ironic performance videos, Bag adopts a series of personae, taking on and taking apart a parade of clichés and stereotypes. With her signature deadpan delivery and deliberately low-tech style, Bag mixes the vernacular of pop culture with irreverently humorous monologues. Questioning how we define ourselves in relation to television, fashion, advertising and the artworld, she creates mediated conceptual parodies that teeter between celebration and critique.

Bag will appear in conversation with writer and independent curator David Rimanelli, who has worked with her on a number of exhibitions. Bag and Rimanelli will screen and discuss works that span the artist's entire career, including Bag's legendary New York City cable access shows; raw early works where Bag's camera roams the streets and chain stores of Manhattan; her acclaimed videos from the '90s that lampoon art stars, art students and art commerce; and recent works that continue Bag's explorations of media-fueled consumer culture. A Q&A with the artist will follow the conversation.


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Alex Bag was born in New York in 1969. She received a BFA from Cooper Union. She has had solo exhibitions at the Zaal de Unie, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York, and 303 Gallery, New York, among others. She has participated in group exhibitions at venues including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Centre d'art contemporain Saint-Geneve, Geneva; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; P.S. 1 Center for Contemporary Art, New York, and Pitti Immagine, Florence, Italy, among many others. In 1996 she was a Visiting Artist at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand. She has performed at The Knitting Factory and Threadwaxing Space, New York, among others.

Bag's first solo New York museum presentation opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art in January 2009 and will remain on view through April 12, 2009.


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David Rimanelli is a renowned art critic and curator. He has been a contributing editor at Artforum since 1997 and has also written for Bookforum, TateEtc., Vogue Paris and Interview Magazine. Rimanelli has taught art courses at New York University, Yale University, Pasadena Art Center and Otis College of Art and Design. He is also a noted curator. Recent shows curated by Rimanelli include "Murder Letters" at Galleria Filomena Soares, Lisbon; "Survivor" at BortolamiDayan, New York; "Women Beware Women" at Deitch Projects, New York; and "Harriet Craig" at apexart, New York.


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EAI is pleased to be making available, for the first time, Bag's body of video works from the 1990s and 2000s. EAI gratefully acknowledges the assistance and collaboration of the Elizabeth Dee Gallery on this project. For more information about Alex Bag's single-channel video works, please visit www.eai.org.


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About EAI

Founded in 1971, Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is one of the world's leading nonprofit resources for video art. A pioneering advocate for media art and artists, EAI's core program is the distribution and preservation of a major collection of over 3,500 new and historical media works by artists. EAI fosters the creation, exhibition, distribution and preservation of video art and digital art. EAI's activities include a preservation program, viewing access, educational services, extensive online resources, and public programs such as artists' talks, exhibitions and panels. The Online Catalogue is a comprehensive resource on the artists and works in the EAI collection, and also features extensive materials on exhibiting, collecting and preserving media art: www.eai.org


Electronic Arts Intermix
535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10011
(212) 337-0680 tel
(212) 337-0679 fax
info@eai.org



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This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the Experimental Television Center. The Experimental Television Center's Presentation Funds Program is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts.